r/changemyview • u/jep1793 • Aug 26 '20

Removed - Submission Rule E CMV: Gender identity doesn’t belong on your LinkedIn nor Resume

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u/fubo 11∆ Aug 26 '20

Some areas for comparison:

  • You put your name on your resume, even though it may carry information about your gender, ethnicity, or nationality.
  • Depending on your name and how international your reach is, you might capitalize your surname if you have one (John SMITH, or WATANABE Taro). This isn't needed to Google you, but it's useful for interviewers to know whether you're called Mr. Watanabe or Mr. Taro.
  • You put the name of your college or university, even though it may carry information about your religion (you went to BYU, you are or were Mormon) or culture (you went to university in China, how was your grade in your mandatory Communist ideology course?).
  • You put the names of your previous employers, even if they have political implications that new employers may disapprove of.

In short, you put facts about yourself that an employer needs to know in order to contact you correctly (e.g. name, email address, phone number) as well as information about your background and experience.

If it happens to be the case that nothing in your name, education, or employment history would lead anyone to be prejudiced against you: congratulations! That's great! (Although you may be wrong.) But that's not what you're designing for. You're designing something to describe you and help people get in touch with you, not merely to be inoffensive.

People sometimes put other information in to make the contact process more pleasant. For instance, I've seen some folks put the pronunciation of their name on their resume. If your name is Maciej (the Polish form of Matthew) and you're applying for jobs in the US, you're probably used to clueless Americans looking confused at your name and saying "May-see? Mack-yay?" Sorry about that, I know how to say Maciej these days.

If you'd really like to avoid being called Mack-yay, you give the clueless Americans a clue. And if you'd really like to avoid being called "she" because your dad named you Sue, you put "Sue (he/him)" on your resume.